Abstract
It is increasingly recognised that co-construction of knowledge
which brings together researcher-derived understanding, with local,
practitioner or non-researcher understanding is necessary to address
current global challenges. Emerging empirical evidence suggests challenges
remain in bridging across scales and ensuring inclusion of the marginalised.
It is unclear whether espoused approaches are in practice enhancing the
wellbeing of those currently on the front lines of ecological, social and
political crises, or, whether they are inadvertently increasing inequality. In
this article, we explore co-construction from our experience as embedded
researcher–practitioners through two case studies: the ecological
restoration of fisheries by the Skolt Sámi in Finland, and the conservation of
agro-ecological and forest management practices by peasant communities
in Paraguay. We challenge the idea that co-construction of knowledge is
sufficient to engage with regressive institutional and political dynamics that
continue to marginalise, arguing for a focus on self-determination to be
the foundation for co-construction.
Keywords: co-construction, marginalised, self-determination, indigenous knowledge.
tomorrow is a new day
other animals
I converse with the fire
tomorrow
it too will have another language
new migration routes for tomorrow's reindeer
the stones will have different traditions
an alien time within time,
alien
Poem by Nils-Aslak Valkeapää from the North Sámi Society (Gaski 2003: 246). Reproduced here with kind permission.
1 Introduction
Addressing today's 'grand challenges' such as climate change and
increasing inequality requires participatory and interactive approaches
to research (Mauser et al. 2013; Hage, Leroy and Petersen 2010;
Huntington 2011). At the heart of these approaches is a recognition that
there are different ways of understanding and knowing the world, and a
belief that bringing these together may provide more holistic responses
which are better suited to addressing systemic challenges (Godemann
2008). A multitude of approaches to bridging knowledge exist, such as
post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1995), transdisciplinarity
(Bergmann et al. 2012), sustainability science (Spangenberg 2011),
Mode 2 (Gibbons 2000), and participatory action research (Reason
and Bradbury 2008). While each develops its own nuanced perspective,
they share co-construction as a common methodology. Here, we
understand co-construction as a process through which different forms
of knowledge that stem from different research disciplines (and their epistemologies) and non-researcher ways of understanding are brought
to bear on real-life challenges linked to environmental sustainability.
This approach moves beyond 'knowledge integration' models common
in natural resource management (e.g. Bohensky and Maru 2011), and
sits within broader approaches to adaptive co-management (Armitage
et al. 2008) or co-governance (Kooiman et al. 2008) which call for
sharing of power, equality and support for social learning.
Indigenous peoples comprise approximately 5 per cent of the world's
population, yet they customarily own, occupy or use 22 per cent of
the world's land surface and manage 11 per cent of the world's forests,
making them important contributors to sustaining the world's remaining
biodiversity (Maffi 2005; Maffi and Woodley 2012). Further, much of the
world's agrobiodiversity is in the hands of peasants who produce a large
proportion of the world's food through agro-ecological practices that
provide a broad array of social and environmental benefits (IAASTD
2009; Altieri and Toledo 2011). In spite of a progressive international
policy framework supporting their rights,1 many of these rural communities
remain politically marginalised (Coates 2003). They hold knowledge that
can support improved environmental management, yet paradoxically, are
at the front lines of environmental disruption. As the indigenous scholar
Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) argues, power relations that stem from colonial
interactions continue to obscure and marginalise indigenous peoples'
knowledge and practices. In such conditions, engagement of marginalised
communities in co-construction initiatives form part of a broader project of
decolonisation and social and environmental justice.
As Polk (2015) notes, most co-construction processes remain 'located'
within research settings and Choudry and Kapor (2010) argue that the
richness of knowledge production from within social movements tends
to be overlooked by researchers. Our understanding of co-construction,
therefore, tends to be limited to how research reaches out to 'other'
forms of knowledge. Seldom, in scholarly circles, do we hear about the
experience from the perspective of the 'others'. Our starting premise in this article is that if research is to ignore the political processes of
contestation that co-construction is embedded within, we run the risk
that enthusiasm and well-meaning efforts to include the knowledge
of local and indigenous communities may, unknowingly, be fuelling
greater inequality.
Our aim is to share learning from experiences with co-construction
driven by marginalised communities in response to their own goals. First,
we provide a brief critical review of the history of bridging between
indigenous and local and scientific knowledge, identifying risks and
opportunities. We then share two case studies from current work with
indigenous and peasant communities. We recognise that definitions of
communities as 'indigenous' and 'peasant' are fraught with political and
analytical conundrums of representation (Posey 2002). We have chosen to
use the terms adopted by the people whose experiences we support and
share because we firmly believe in their right to name themselves. We
do not, however, claim to be representing their views. Our positionality
as authors of this article is as locally embedded practitioners who are
bridging to external research institutions, with two of the co-authors
(TM and ML) working locally through longstanding relationships
of trust, and two (MA and SL) supporting indigenous and peasant
movements over several decades. We share learning from our experiences
with: (i) ecological restoration of fisheries by the Skolt Sámi in Finland
in collaboration with Snowchange Cooperative, and (ii) assessing the
resilience of community conservation initiatives of peasant communities
in Eastern Paraguay in collaboration with the Global Forest Coalition
and the Center for Studies and Research of Rural Law and Agrarian
Reform (CEIDRA) of the Catholic University of Asunción.
2 The risks of co-construction for indigenous knowledge
We use the term indigenous knowledge (IK) following Posey (2002: 27)
who argues that it is an umbrella term that includes all forms of local
and traditional knowledge. Anthropologists have shown that IK is
situated in institutions and social practices, that it is fluid, and constantly
engaging with processes of representation and power (Raffles 2003;
Agrawal 1995, 2002). Co-construction processes that work with
researcher-derived knowledge and IK are, from this perspective,
implicitly embedded within the political struggles of indigenous
peoples and peasant communities (e.g. Bryan 2009; Turnbull 2009).
Environmental management, however, has historically taken a more
instrumental view of IK, with researchers and practitioners seeking to
use it to fill gaps or validate scientific knowledge to improve the way
natural resources are managed (e.g. Johannes 1993; Huntington 2000).
The general trend has been to seek to 'integrate' IK into externally
derived models in ways that are seemingly unaware of the politics
within which knowledge is created, contested, negotiated and promoted.
More recently, the advent of relational and dynamic approaches of
managing 'social-ecological systems' (Berkes 2012) has created more
space for all knowledge, including IK, to be recognised as embedded in social and cultural institutions and practices that enable more
sustainable resource management. This is echoed in sustainability
approaches, where we see a growing appreciation that co-construction
processes are not isolated experiences of knowledge exchange, but are
embedded within institutional and societal dynamics (e.g. van Kerkhoff
and Lebel 2015; Polk 2015). Particularly in progressive and wealthier
national contexts such as North America, New Zealand and Australia,
co-construction has now been codified within processes that espouse
co-management, described as 'the sharing of power and responsibility
between government and local resource users' (Berkes 2009: 1). These
approaches create a window of opportunity for co-construction to
become a vehicle for sharing power with marginalised groups.
In practice, however, the success of co-management is still measured
by the extent to which there is formal recognition of IK, with little
analysis of how this recognition affects broader community processes
of self-determination. As Nadasdy (2003), for example, shows for
the Kluane First Nation in Canada, formal recognition of IK in a
shared governance arrangement led to their knowledge becoming
subject to a bureaucratic process based on government set measures.
As a result, a range of external governance mechanisms replaced
traditional practices on the land (such as hunting) that were necessary
to reproduce knowledge. The formalisation of IK for the purpose
of joint governance, therefore, can potentially lead to co-option and
assimilation, putting at risk cultural and social practices including
embedded leadership and engagement with the land (Apgar 2010;
Apgar, Argumedo and Allen 2009; Lehtinen and Mustonen 2013) which
are central to the creation and use of IK. Co-management approaches,
therefore, may have moved conceptually towards understanding social
dimensions, but they still struggle to overcome the inherent inequality
between researchers and communities (e.g. Cinner et al. 2012).
In poorer contexts, co-management is even more challenged to
overcome marked power relations between 'implementers of
co-management' and local communities and often leads to further
marginalisation (Béné and Neiland 2004; Wilson et al. 2006). As
Altamirano-Jiménez (2013) argues, IK is, in many contexts, only
embraced when not perceived as a threat to imposed development
models. In situations where formal rights of communities are not
recognised, co-construction and co-governance approaches are
inherently threatening. As others have argued (e.g. Wohling 2009)
the disparate power relations that often exist between researchers or
managers pushing their models and knowledge on to 'other', and
usually poor communities, can perpetuate their marginalisation further.
In summary, instrumental approaches to engaging with IK in
environmental management fail to appreciate the broader political and
social processes within which knowledge is created and contested. Yet
even with co-management and transdisciplinary approaches that move
beyond the technical, challenges remain in ensuring quality engagement across multiple stakeholders, that is contextually embedded and that
ensures equity and inclusion of the marginalised (Lebel, Wattana
and Talerngsri 2015; Bowen et al. 2015). Evidence suggests that it
is necessary, but not sufficient, to espouse equality if researchers are
aiming to minimise the risk that marginalised communities face through
engaging in co-construction. Given these ongoing challenges, how can
researchers and marginalised communities negotiate their way through
the messy contestations that are inherent in co-construction processes?
3 Case studies
Ecological restoration of the Näätämö River, Finland
Fishing in the fresh waters of Northern Eurasia has been the defining
activity that has allowed indigenous communities of the region to survive
historically through harsh winters and short summers, with early records
of fishing nets dating back 10,000 years (Mustonen and Mustonen
2011). Specifically, the Näätämö watershed in the Finnish–Norwegian
borderlands is a major Atlantic salmon stream (Feodoroff and Mustonen
2013) with a wide diversity of fish species (Niemelä et al. 2001). Today it
is the home of the Skolt Sámi indigenous peoples, most of whom live in
the community of Sevettijärvi, Finland. The Skolt Sámi, often referred
to as the most traditional of the Sámi indigenous nations, were forced to
relocate to this area from their former homelands in present-day Russia
in 1944, in the aftermath of the Second World War. They have rebuilt
their traditional economies of reindeer herding, hunting and fishing in
this new homeland and have, through time, resisted assimilation into
European ways of life. Their practices are embedded in the distinct
ways in which all indigenous societies of the Arctic understand and
engage with time–space which is markedly different to linear scientific
environmental management models.
For the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, the driver of life and society
is constant change. Most change is a welcome and natural cycle of
life. Time, space and engagement with place is understood by the
Sámi as circular, and hunting, fishing and other subsistence activities
act as means of communication, exchange and relationship building
with the tundra and taiga, and through them with the universe. The
community thus maintains relationships and reciprocities with natural
systems through their everyday engagement. A central component
of this engagement are 'events'. An 'event' is often interpreted as
embedded in its immediate geographical surroundings, but also in the
mythical–spiritual deeper layers of mind and memory. Thus, an 'event'
can be understood in multiple ways. It may contain links to mythical
times, which are passed down as oral narratives and histories or exist
simultaneously in the present and in myth–time. If it involves significant
animals, such as the raven, a bird of knowledge, creator and trickster in
Arctic societies, it is highly significant. Some places may also represent
'events' and can embody dual or multiple beings too; for example,
sacred places such as grave sites or those containing stones or trees.
Elders and spiritual people in the communities guide the community to
form relationships with and build meaning through an 'event', which symbolises the reciprocal and deep connection between the Sámi and
their traditional lands. The embedded experience of life on the land is,
therefore, central to Sámi IK.
Today, management of the Näätämö salmon fishery is part of the
Atlantic salmon management bilateral agreement between Finland and
Norway. In 1973, Finland re-confirmed the responsibilities the state
inherited from Russia towards the recognition of Sámi rights as enshrined
in the Skolt Act of Finland. It provides for user rights for 'traditional
lifeways' of herding, fisheries and hunting, but in practice has been poorly
implemented. In spite of recent attempts by the states of Finland and
Norway to converse with different Sámi nations on questions of cultural,
linguistic and land rights, the Eastern Sámi peoples feel that their cyclical
and non-linear views of the world have not been adequately included in
the management of natural resources. They argue that this has, in part,
led to the demise of the ecosystems, and is consequently threatening their
way of life (Skolt Sámi Nation and Snowchange Cooperative 2011).
In response, the Skolt Sámi engaged in a community-based initiative
to understand the status of, and ecologically restore, damaged parts of
the Näätämö basin. The initiative was supported by the Snowchange
Cooperative. Beginning in 2011, it is the first attempt at a formal process
of co-management through co-construction of IK and science in
Finland. It aimed to respond to the negative impacts of climate change,
and the need to address past ecological damages. All activities were
designed and prioritised by the Skolt Sámi themselves and the initiative
was co-managed by Snowchange and Skolt leaders. Snowchange has
pioneered alternative approaches to the established Sámi Studies (Smith
1999), advocating for Sámi as agents and co-researchers in the Artic
climate change assessments (Arctic Council 2005). This follows the idea
that the community in question decides, steers and guides the research,
while research and cultural organisations such as Snowchange provide
a 'bridge' between the world of peer-reviewed science and IK. The
transdisciplinary team built for this initiative included geographers,
limnologists, biologists and social scientists, all selected based on their
openness to experiment with new approaches. The relationships of
trust that were built through the bridging of Snowchange meant that
day-to-day exchanges between community members and researchers
tended to be welcoming and informal.
Co-construction was facilitated through bringing IK and science
into a joint process of understanding ecosystem changes and relating
them to livelihoods strategies. The initiative started with rigorous
baseline work which included preparation of the Eastern Sámi Atlas
(Mustonen and Mustonen 2011) containing information of indigenous
governance of water bodies practised prior to large-scale colonial
presence. Local fishermen and women added to this through conducting
interviews in their Skolt language about the salmon, place names and
past environmental change, helping to record traditional knowledge
(Feodoroff and Mustonen 2013). Building on the historical baseline, local fishermen and women then led environmental monitoring of the
watershed in 2013 and 2014.
During the summer field season, they recorded their observations with
digital cameras, and shared them with the science team, developing a
new field method called 'visual-optic histories' (see Mustonen 2015).
The method led to detection of new species arriving in the ecosystem.
For example, the appearance of the southern Potosia cuprea scarabaeid
beetle was first interpreted as a significant 'event' in the Skolt world
and was documented through oral history. Field hotographs and
observations by the Skolts were combined with a species identification
by an insect specialist confirming a new geographical discovery.
Observations of water level and temperature fluctuations linked to
salmon movement patterns and changes in water quality such as algae
blooms and foam, were also co-constructed through sharing local
monitoring data with limnological data publicly available for the basin.
During the Atlantic salmon fishing season, Skolts kept records of their
catches. Catch statistics were then compared with the scientific surveys
of the amounts and qualities of salmon swimming up the river. The
Skolt records, for example, noted an expansion of the range of the
northern pike to stream sections of the river close to lake Opukasjärvi,
an observation science records had not yet detected, but could help
interpret in relation to the warming waters. They also recorded
'lost' salmon-spawning areas on maps. These sites had been lost due
to state-sponsored land management actions, mainly for forestry
experiments in the 1960s and 1970s as well as establishment of new
boating routes. The documentation of sites of erosion on lake and
river banks, a sign of potential climate change impact, were crucial for
informing ecological restoration activities.
For the Skolt Sámi, seeing their language and culture valued led to
an increase in self-esteem and sense of power over their resources.
The process has resulted in Sámi knowledge revitalisation through
establishing a community-based traditional knowledge archive to serve
both the community and future research. Further, monitoring using IK
has led to new joint management options and actions for the watershed.
For example, the range expansion of the pike has led to decisions
to adapt cultural harvests. While co-management has not yet been
formalised, national institutions such as Metsähallitus,2 the local Centre
for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, and
municipalities are interested in learning about new management options
through a Skolt research agreement. The aim over the next few years is
to build a formal co-management and ecological restoration programme.
The Näätämö case demonstrates that when communities are the main
driving force in co-construction, science-relevant local observations
can stimulate indigenous culture, land use and practices, and can
lead to ecological restoration. In turn, this can support efforts to build
resilience to threats such as climate change. The experience argues for starting with local concerns, ensuring they remain central, and enabling
local leadership. Importantly, as the initiative was under Sámi control,
fishermen and women and reindeer herders could implement their
monitoring through continuing to engage with cyclical nature and
continuing to reproduce their IK.
In this case, the historically undefined role of IK in the Finnish context,
and non-interference of state agencies in the co-construction experiment
meant that a safe space could be created by a bridging activist–research
organisation that had established relationships of trust. In this space,
the Sámi could conceptualise and demonstrate their needs, interests
and depth of their IK as it relates to being embedded on the land and
connected to the universe. So while the immediate goal for the use
of IK was to instrumentally help build understanding by bridging it
with science, the process, starting with a community need and Sámi
leadership, meant that their self-determination was never at risk. This
first experience of co-construction within a framing of co-management
in Finland has created a powerful baseline for future discussions of Sámi
knowledge of aquatic ecosystems and ecological restoration.
The Näätämö case opened up an opportunity to challenge the false
narratives of 'wilderness' which state agencies hold of Skolt space as
a 'pristine' undisturbed nature to reframe engagement as restoration.
However, the case remains a relatively isolated success story within
Finland. Ironically, the timing of this work has coincided with legislative
reforms that have further eroded opportunities for sharing power.
The 2013 strategy for the Arctic region (Prime Minister's Office 2013)
focuses on building infrastructure, extraction of natural resources and
use of science-based monitoring targets, ignoring the presence of Sámi
knowledge and lifeworlds. Simultaneously, the contested question of
Sámi rights remains unresolved. In this hostile political environment, the
Sámi must necessarily engage cautiously with formal co-management
processes to ensure that they protect their non-assimilationist IK.
Rescuing agro-ecological and forest restoration knowledge in Paraguay
The Community Conservation Resilience Initiative (CCRI) is an
international initiative that began in 2015 and is led jointly by the
Global Forest Coalition (GFC) and a broad coalition of indigenous
peoples' organisations and non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) working on socially just forest policies. It builds on the now
well-recognised role that IK and community governance processes
play in supporting forest conservation in many parts of the world
(Agrawal 2007; Robinson, Holland and Naughton-Treves 2014).
The initiative aims to promote respect and support for community
conservation and contribute to building resilience through
implementation of community-driven participatory assessments of
community conservation. Through co-constructed understanding of
the strengths and opportunities for building resilience, results from
22 countries, involving over 60 different communities, will provide
IK-informed policy recommendations for forest policies nationally and globally. In each site the process is facilitated by bridging organisations
(either NGOs or social movements) with established relationships
with communities, and a team of local and external academics and
practitioners support the process. Here we share our learning from one
of the early assessment processes in Eastern Paraguay.
The Paraguayan territory is highly biodiverse (Cartes and Yanosky 2003) and is located in one of the centres of origin of cultivated plants in Latin America (Lovera 1991). Its rich agrobiodiversity has been nurtured historically through traditional agricultural practices. Paraguayan farmers today supply up to 60 per cent of the national food demand yet occupy only up to 8 per cent of the agricultural land (Lovera 2014). This is possible due to their agro-ecological and traditional farming practices which are based on working with crops that are adapted to local soil conditions, water availability, and conditions of competition with other living beings. Their agro-ecological practices are themselves a form of knowledge co-construction as they blend IK with new agricultural tools. Soil management, water and competition between living beings are seen as contributing factors in an agro-ecological production system. This is in contrast to 'conventional' agriculture, which transforms the conditions of the soil, uses pesticides, manipulates seeds and animal breeds, introduces transgenic crops and eliminates plants and animals not considered useful (Lovera 1998). Such 'conventional' agricultural models are today causing widespread deforestation in Paraguay due to industrial scale export-oriented agricultural production of genetically modified soybeans and beef. While there is a broad policy framework in place to protect biodiversity, guarantee and promote access to land for smallholder farmers, and restrict the abuses associated with industrial-scale production, corruption and corporate interests ensure that it is largely unimplemented (Fogel and Riquelme 2005).
In Eastern Paraguay (39 per cent of the total area of the country), much of the forest cover has now been replaced by cattle farming and industrial scale agriculture. The CCRI assessment was conducted in two traditional peasant communities that are trying to maintain their agro-ecological practices in this challenging context of expanding conventional agriculture linked to national corporate interests. The community of San Miguel Lote 8, in the district of Minga Pora, Department of Alto Paraná and the community of Maracanã in the district of Curuguaty, Department of Canindeyú, share the experience of being forced to leave their original homelands and have resettled in their current locations. San Miguel was founded in 1989 by 250 families and currently occupies 500ha, with half taken up by the community of 700 people, and the rest having been converted to monoculture soy plantations. Maracanã is much larger and 2,000 people occupy 23,000ha, which has been divided equally between all settlers. Some families have obtained a formal land title, but a large part remains the property of the Paraguayan Land Reform agency. Both communities have historically made claims and had to fight for their right to land.
Their knowledge and experience with conservation of agrobiodiversity
has not previously been documented or analysed in a way that could
support lobbying policymakers using 'evidence' produced through a
co-constructed research process.
The assessment was implemented by both communities in 2015 and
facilitated by CEIDRA in collaboration with the social movement
Namoseke Monsanto.3 CEIDRA has, over many years of work with
peasant communities in Paraguay, shifted away from disciplinary
research that engaged minimally with IK, to using approaches
with peasant communities that build on their knowledge through
co-ownership of the research process and the resulting outputs.
Researchers at CEIDRA shifted their approach through their ongoing
dialogue with communities over decades, realising together that
co-constructed knowledge is better able to meet the needs and support
the wellbeing of the most marginalised communities in Paraguay.
Nonetheless, at the outset of the CCRI assessment process, some
community members expected that the facilitation team would deliver
solutions to what they understood as 'new problems' generated through
shifting agricultural patterns. The facilitation team worked with
community members to adapt the CCRI assessment methodology4
following its five guiding principles: (i) respect for the rights of
indigenous peoples and local communities, including their right to free,
prior and informed consent; (ii) community ownership; (iii) adaptive
facilitation; (iv) participation and representation, and (v) effective
participation of women and the incorporation of a gender analysis
in each of the assessments. Further, the partnership with Namoseke
Monsanto, an activist organisation whose goals align with community
concerns around 'conventional' agriculture, created the conditions for
the assessment to be led by their IK.
The assessment enabled communities to produce evidence of the diversity of species that are maintained in the forests and the conservation and restoration initiatives under way locally through use of their agro-ecological practices. The process also produced evidence of the agrobiodiversity which is conserved through farming of crops and animal raising. The nutritional status of the community was reported as good, providing some local evidence of the importance of agrobiodiversity through seed conservation and traditional exchange systems for sustaining their own food production and food sovereignty.
The results also highlighted, from the perspective of the communities,
that a major external threat to their farming practices is the low market
prices for their products. The lack of prospects for sustainable income from farming is leading to young people leaving the village in search of
poorly remunerated labour in urban centres. Migration of youth was
therefore identified as one of the main internal threats to their resilience.
Other external threats identified include the use of herbicides and
other agrotoxins in the expanding soy plantations fuelling deforestation.
In Maracanã, pressure on people to sell or rent their land to large neighbouring landholders farming soy was a related threat. Further,
analysis of community resilience in light of broader policy change
pointed to the national agricultural policy, which favours the expansion
of soy monocultures, as a central threat to conservation of biodiversity.
While the results of the CCRI assessment process by peasant
communities in Paraguay may not seem surprising, they fill a critical
gap in evidence of the role that IK, embedded within co-constructed
agro-ecological practices, plays in supporting food production and
biodiversity conservation. Further, they show that the resilience of
conservation practices and their associated knowledge is severely
undermined by the expansion of agro-industrial practices that are
primarily triggered by increased meat consumption and production,
including in intensive livestock production systems that use significant
amounts of soy as feedstock. This finding sheds light on the false
assumptions of 'co-existence' between agro-ecology and forest
conservation practices and large-scale agro-industrial practices used
to frame national agricultural policy. The resulting empirical evidence
strengthens campaigns of social movements and researcher activities
within them, arguing for community forest governance and land reform
policies that grant peasant communities the right to secure land tenure
as necessary to support conservation of Paraguay's biodiversity.
4 Lessons for researcher–practitioners
The two case studies provide three lessons for researchers engaged in
the practice of co-construction with marginalised communities. First,
they provide evidence that understanding and engaging with IK as
embedded within social, cultural and institutional practices related
to territory, indigenous worldviews and identity, enables instrumental
problem-solving approaches to be embedded within normative
approaches seeking social and environmental justice. In both cases,
communities perceived co-construction as an opportunity to tackle the
complex challenges they face relating to environmental degradation,
as well as an opportunity to build on political struggles for their rights.
By bringing seemingly contradictory approaches to working with IK
together, marginalised communities may be able to build confidence in
their ability to find viable solutions to their own challenges as central
to their self-determination and build a platform from which they may contribute to addressing 'grand challenges'. In both cases the most
important outcome for the communities came as a result of their
knowledge being valued in its own right. Co-construction, therefore, was
a means to achieving a community-defined end.
Second, both cases illustrate that contextualised methods for
co-construction need to be cognisant of local dynamics and adapted
accordingly. The Näätämö watershed case in Finland was a new
co-management project in the Finnish context, building on other
experiences in the Arctic and aiming to avoid the risk of co-option of
IK into a rigid and externally defined model. Sophisticated bridging
of epistemologies at the local level led to methodological innovation (visual-optic histories) which emerged through creatively finding new
mediums to translate and link ancient wisdom to scientific data and
understanding. This is an example of eclectic methodological pluralism
(see Chambers 2015) emerging through practice. Yet, it was possible
to avoid assimilation, in part, because in this context, indigenous
worldviews operate in undefined spaces which are difficult to co-opt
(Mustonen and Mustonen 2016). Land-based economies such as fisheries
and reindeer herding, some of which are unbroken nomadic systems, are
part of non-conforming cultural continuums dating back to the post-Ice
Age era. The lack of recognition of the Skolt Sámi knowledge system
meant they could work safely from their ontological reality. In this case,
the lack of formal recognition of Sámi knowledge was an advantage.
In contrast, for Paraguayan peasants, a lack of formal recognition of
rights to land undermines the contribution of IK to the conservation of
agrobiodiversity, and as a result puts their livelihoods and wellbeing at
risk. In the context of national policies supporting large companies to
expand their conventional agriculture, the lack of recognition of land
rights means peasant movements do not have a seat at the table and
their knowledge about genetic resources for food and agriculture and
agro-ecological practices is being overlooked in both formal agricultural
science and related policy processes. In this context, recognition of
IK was the first step in their process of building local resilience and
required a more instrumental approach to working with IK. The aim
was to first build evidence to support campaigns for inclusion in national
and international policy processes – arguing that IK is playing a central
role in biodiversity conservation.
The third lesson concerns the role that bridging organisations and
researchers often play in working with instrumental and normative
approaches to co-construction, and their ability to bring them together
to support meaningful change. Knowledge production is a social process
embedded in power dynamics, and the epistemological differences
between types of knowledge mean co-construction is inherently full of
contestation. This is not to argue that researchers are bridging across
binary knowledges, but rather, it is about meaningfully navigating the
interactions between fluid, embedded and intimate knowledges. Through
the case studies, we have shared our experience as engaged researchers
playing a facilitating role in the messy processes of co-construction. In
Finland, Snowchange has a history of playing the researcher–activist–
implementer role successfully, and could therefore forge partnerships
with researchers who were willing and able to engage ethically. Likewise,
in Paraguay, the coalition of organisations involved, spanning engaged
researcher and activist realms meant that strong links to communities
existed and trust could be built. In both cases, part of our role was also
to build networks across localities and strengthen evidence across sites
(a cornerstone of both CCRI and Snowchange), to feed in to national
and international policy processes. While working locally helps to
co-construct understanding for addressing manifestations of change
locally and building resilience, in isolation, it cannot support the systemic shifts required in policy and practice that can continue to undermine
local resilience. In Finland, government policies to exploit the 'wild'
Arctic region of the country can undermine the progress made, and
in Paraguay, government policies that facilitate deforestation through
monoculture plantations continue to threaten the resilience of local
communities. The bridging and facilitating role across scales, therefore,
enables engagement with broader political and social processes required
to support local self-determination of marginalised communities.
We do not wish to suggest that playing an engaged facilitation role
is simple, or indeed comfortable for all researchers at all times. In
Paraguay, facilitators had to manage expectations of communities
and purposefully build their confidence in the leading role that IK
could play in the assessment process, while in Finland, understanding
of internal community dynamics through years of interaction helped
to mediate any tensions that emerged. In both cases, we found
ourselves acting as guardians of various forms of knowledge and were
simultaneously gatekeepers and brokers. We took our central guidance
from community mechanisms that mediate our engagement, and which
exist to address potential negative impacts of the 'gatekeeper' at its
worst. We suggest, that when the starting point is rooted in local needs,
and the supporting partnerships are cognisant of their facilitating and
mediating role, then tensions can be negotiated, and co-construction
can indeed become a means to support self-determination.
5 Recommendations
Enthusiasm for more interactive and participatory approaches to
research that co-construct understanding through bridging different
knowledge systems creates opportunity for greater inclusion of the
marginalised in analysing and addressing complex development
challenges, particularly those affecting them directly. We have shown
that from the perspective of the communities, the promise becomes
a reality when their knowledge systems are understood through
their own worldviews and lifeways. We recommend an approach of
'mediated relativity' in line with Purcell and Onjoro's (2002: 171) view
of 'accepting the intensified process of cultural hybridisation as a given,
but at the same time, underscore the right of indigenous peoples to the
highest level of self-determination consistent with community viability
under global conditions at any time'. What is centrally important,
therefore, is that the territories, knowledge and rights of indigenous and
local communities and the restoration of past ecological damages be
explicitly acknowledged when mediating co-construction processes.
For researchers using co-construction methodologies in research that
aim to have development impact, this constitutes both an opportunity
and a challenge. The opportunity lies in bringing to life the nuanced and
contested understanding of knowledge and the power dynamics that
they are inherently part of, to facilitate the questioning of underlying
assumptions on how research is constructed. This is not to suggest that
all researchers should necessarily become political activists but, rather, that when engaging in messy real-life challenges with communities
whose livelihoods are threatened, being blind to politics and power is
not sufficient and is unethical. Indeed, at times external agents aiming
to support the wellbeing of marginalised communities must let go of
their own intentions and respect that communities themselves should
determine the levels and ways of engagement in co-construction. At
times, this may mean respecting that non-engagement is the chosen
path. We argue that the progressive international policies that protect
the rights of the marginalised, with associated codes of conduct, such as
free, prior and informed consent, should be an explicit part of reflexive,
ethical research practice if co-construction is to support the selfdetermination
of marginalised peoples.
Notes
1 For example, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples and the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the
Responsible Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of
National Food Security, among others.
2 Metsähallitus is the forest state enterprise of Finland, which manages
and 'owns' all public and conserved lands in Finland. It is the
primary land manager in the Skolt Sámi area.
3 A network of peasant movements, research centres, indigenous
peoples' movements, NGOs and other civil society organisations
that have mobilised against what they call the 'sojasation' of the
countryside by companies such as Monsanto.
4 See http://globalforestcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/New-Last-CCR-Initiative-methodology_May-2014.pdf for the
methodology.
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